“I don’t have to,” he smirked. “Because I’m not alone. Not for long.”
“Incoming!” Cal yelled the warning just as Whitethorn hunters burst into the yard.
Crossbow bolts glinted like deadly sleet. One of them narrowly missed Aggie’s ear.
On the plus side, if Fletcher loosed his arrow now, he’d kill his own hunters.
Aggie flung the hose away, rolling low to avoid getting stabbed, staked, or otherwise turned into a human pincushion. She knocked Lucy off her feet, out of the trajectory of the flying missiles.
Beside her, Catelyn clotheslined a hunter across the throat. “I don’t even like vampires,” she complained, as he gagged, stumbling back. “Sorry, man.” He still kicked her in the knee and she fell, screaming.
“Stay down,” he barked at her.
“You first,” she barked back. “This is our farm.”
Lucy was the first to break free of the drug.
“Om, you bastards!” she yelled, swinging a punch at the hunter. He flew back into the snow, nose broken. “Damn, Mom was right,” she muttered to no one in particular. “Meditation works.”
She stood over Nicholas even as Solange fell out of her trance and into a forward flip. She kicked a hunter away from Kieran. Nicholas soon whirled into motion, blocking Lucy from a flung stake. He caught it and flung it back in one smooth flick of his arm. It caught the hunter’s right arm, leaving a raw, bleeding cut. Blood dripped into the gasoline-soaked snow.
“Everyone get out of here,” he ordered. Kieran was already shoving Paige and Catelyn away from the area. Noah threw a hunter into a cedar hedge.
Flames raced up a pine tree, popping the glass lights. The edge of Lucy’s coat began to smolder. Black smoke wreathed her. Nicholas dove for her, covering her with his body. He shoved handfuls of snow over her until she slapped at his hands. “I’m fine,” she repeated until he finally heard her. “Nicholas, I’m fine.”
In the chaos, Fletcher bolted.
Cal went after him, blurring between the trees. Before her brain could interrupt with habit and training, Aggie followed at a dead run. She was dimly aware of the sounds of the fighting behind her. She didn’t know what kind of weapons Fletcher had rigged through the trees, but Cal was already pinned to a tree by a bolt through his left shoulder. Blood soaked into his shirt. His fangs were out and there was a circle of red around his sky-blue pupils.
Fletcher lifted his crossbow, smiling. Cal didn’t say a word. Even in excruciating pain, he was silent and patient. She knew he could see her.
She could be Yen’s little sister.
Or she could be Aggie.
She stepped forward even as Yen’s training began its regular loop in her head. She used her body as a shield, turning to face Fletcher.
“Aggie, get out of here,” Cal snapped, struggling against the bolt. It was soaked in holy water, the flesh around it raw and bubbling.
Fletcher tossed her a disgusted look. “I really thought you might be one of us some day. Now look at you. Begging for a vampire’s life.”
“I’m not begging,” she said, catching a glint of the tinsel in Paige’s hair. “I’m telling you to back the hell off.”
“Or what?” Fletcher sneered.
“Or this.”
The arrow caught him in thigh, just above the knee. He howled, dropping his crossbow to clutch at his bleeding leg. “You shot me!” he moaned.
“Yeah,” Paige said, emerging from the shadows. “And I’ll do it again.”
“But I’m human.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re not a monster,” she snorted.
Aggie turned to face Cal.
Stake him while you can. Vampires always go for the kill. Don’t hesitate. Heart, throat, holy water.
“Shh,” Aggie murmured to her sister’s ghostly voice, yanking the stake out. Cal hissed in pain, jaw clenched tight. She stepped back.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome.”
They stood in the snow, staring at each other.
“If you don’t kiss him right now, I’ll never forgive you,” Paige muttered, turning away. Fletcher was still moaning. “And you shut up, you’re ruining the moment.” She punched him in the face and he keeled over. “What?” she said to Aggie and Cal. “I don’t have any rope to tie him up with.”
Cal still hadn’t moved. Aggie knew he was waiting for her to make a decision. Or she could walk away now. She could do something she thought was right, even though Yen would have thought it was wrong.
Was she brave enough for that?
She leaned toward Cal, a scant inch of movement and then his hands were in her hair and his mouth was on hers and the kiss held them together on the longest night of the year. Warmth tingled up her spine. He kissed her slowly, softly, until she made a sound of impatience in the back of her throat and yanked him closer. She said everything she didn’t know how to feel, never mind speak, in the press of her lips. And she knew that Cal, being Cal, understood.
And when a plume of fire shot into the sky, gilding the pine trees and the clouds heavy with snow, she almost didn’t notice. The smell of charred wood and gasoline drifted on the hot wind. A cedar hedge crackled as it burned.
“Hey, you two, you set the forest on fire,” Paige grinned. “Hot.”
The snow around the stone fire pit had melted away to mud and grass. Lucy, Nicholas, Solange, and Kieran stood on the edge with Catelyn, who looked more comfortable with the fiery explosion than sharing the company of so many vampires. When she saw Aggie’s hand in Cal’s she sighed, disgusted. Paige reached for his other hand out of spite, and grinned.
Lucy’s hair was wet against her neck and there was blood on her sweater. The flames turned everything gold. Several hunters lay trussed up like Christmas turkeys at her feet. Kieran used his cell phone to call a unit in to collect them.
Lucy linked arms with Solange, and they both smiled strangely nostalgic smiles.
“Yup.” Lucy grinned. “Just like old times.”
Craving more ALYXANDRA HARVEY?
Don’t miss the start of a romantic new trilogy, The Lovegrove Legacy, about three cousins discovering their hidden powers . . . and the impact they have on the high-society world around them.
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Prologue
1814
Breaking into a dead woman’s house was easy work since she rarely complained.
Breaking into a dead witch’s house was a different matter altogether.
You were as likely to come across some bit of wandering magic as a weeping relative pacing the floor. When a witch died, many of her spells unraveled and the results were unpredictable at best. Moira might get lucky and the house wards would break first. On the other hand, Mrs. Lawton’s ghost might push her down the stairs.
She’d have to risk it. One-Eyed Joe wanted what was inside, even if he didn’t know it yet. And the old lady’s body would be hauled off to the cemetery tomorrow. Moira had no intention of becoming a grave robber.
Moira stayed crouched on the roof next door for over an hour, watching carefully as a household lamp was carried from room to room. The gargoyle on the corner of the Lawton house was draped in black bombazine, like the mirrors inside would be. Mourning extended to all parts of the house, and the ghost was expected to protect its family while the gargoyle slept.
Finally, the lamplight floated upstairs. She waited an hour after it was extinguished, just to be safe. She wished she had Strawberry with her, but her friend was off on another job. And if she took one of the boys they’d want the bigger cut just for being there. Even though Moira had been stealing things to sell at the market since she was nine years old, and some of those boys barely had a year under their belts.
She hopped over the gap between the roofs and slid down a drainpipe to the parlor window on the north side of the building. It was customary to leave it open for the spirit to pass through. Moira didn’t mind s
haring with a ghost; she was used to sharing the rooftops with vampire pigeons, rats the size of hedgehogs, and Nigel the snorer. She left a muffin on the sill as an offering. Mrs. Lawton might have preferred wine or sweets as many spirits did, but Moira only had one lemon-drop candy left and she wasn’t about to give it up for a dead woman with no taste buds.
She wiggled inside, grateful poor girls didn’t have to wear corsets, and Madcaps didn’t even have to wear dresses. Her trousers were frayed in one knee and two sizes too big, but they were comfortable and allowed her to move in ways that would have snapped the spines of soft aristocratic girls.
The house smelled like whiskey, cheap lamp oil, and a dead body. There was no odor of lemon balm, which was a relief. Warlocks smelled like lemon balm, so she knew for sure that she was stealing from a regular witch. Warlocks just weren’t worth the risk. They were ruthless in life and worse in death.
Moira paused, waiting for her vision to adjust to the gloom and assessing her surroundings. The protective eyes painted on the thresholds and over the lintels were draped in black material, just like the gargoyle had been. There was the usual assortment of chairs and trinkets. She didn’t know how people lived in such close quarters with so much clutter. She hated the feeling of being inside a building, without a view of the sky or seven different escape routes at all times. Moira’s feet burned, the way they always did when she was courting trouble. She tried to ignore it, reminding herself the walls were soft enough to kick through, if worse came to worst.
She knew the upstairs had two rooms and the attic was full of mice. She’d sent her familiar inside earlier in the day, just to be sure. Having a cat as a fetch was infinitely more practical than the wolves and eagles the fancy witches coveted. They might be more romantic than an alley cat, but you couldn’t exactly send your wolf-familiar into the body of a real wolf in London to any reasonable purpose, could you? Cats, on the other hand, were everywhere and rarely noticed.
A scrawny russet tabby with a bent ear leaped out of Moira’s rib cage. The fiery pinpricks in her heels subsided to a low warning itch. The first time she’d felt Marmalade leave her body, Moira had thrown up. And then spent the night crying because she thought she was going crazy. One-Eyed Joe found her and fed her mint tea and told her stories about witches and magic. He’d taught her to avoid the Order and never sell to a warlock without a disguise and that her familiar was her closest ally, literally created out of her own magic.
Marmalade swiped at her leg with a ghostly claw. Blood welled on the scratch.
“You know, Strawberry’s familiar is a little white mouse. She brings her flowers.” Marmalade knew full well that Strawberry’s familiar was a mouse; keeping the two apart was a constant struggle.
Magic clung to the cupboard on the wall and billowed like pink steam out of a teapot. Old lady Lawton was a tea-leaf reader and she’d protected the tools of her trade and the magical artifacts in her home from tampering and theft. Luckily, Moira wasn’t interested in those.
She crept forward to the dining table. It was covered in a white sheet on which Mrs. Lawton lay in her best dress. Her gray hair was curled and a silver brooch was pinned to her collar. Moira left the pin even though it would have fetched a decent price. It wasn’t what she was after and it felt rather rude, considering.
She gently pried Mrs. Lawton’s eyelids open. They felt like stiff paper. Her right eye was cloudy and vacant, her left perfectly clear and blue as cornflower petals.
The glass eye of a blind witch three days dead.
She popped it loose, trying very hard not to hear the vile popping sound it made when it came free. She tucked it into the pocket of her striped green waistcoat, refusing to gag.
She placed a coin over the eye socket, as payment. It wasn’t stealing if you paid for it. And, if you believed in the old stories, you had to have a coin to pay your way to the other side. She hoped it would appease the ghost long enough for Moira to slip out the window.
It wasn’t enough.
Mrs. Lawton’s spirit sat straight up out of her body and screeched.
“Thief! Thief in the house!”
“Bollocks!” Moira jumped a good foot into the air and then stumbled back against the wall, gasping. Bloody ghosts. Marmalade hissed, fur rising like a boot brush. When no one came running to investigate, Moira released her breath.
Mrs. Lawton didn’t drift forward like pollen or moonlight or any of the things poets claimed. Ice skittered over the floorboards as she slammed into Moira, mouth opening wide to show rotted teeth. Her breath was toads and mushrooms and mildew.
Moira clamped between her teeth an iron nail she’d dug out of a rafter. The iron helped, but it didn’t banish Mrs. Lawton completely. The ghost’s hand closed around Moira’s throat. Her touch burned even as frost filled the space between them.
Mrs. Lawton shouldn’t have been able to do that, even as a recent ghost. There were wards over London. Locks on mystical gates and portals. Binding spells. The Order.
Mrs. Lawton didn’t seem to care for any of those fail-safes.
And for a dead old lady, she packed quite a punch.
Moira’s feet felt branded, as if she didn’t already know she needed to get out of here. Now. She was weak as boiled turnips. Her vision started to go gray and blotchy.
Marmalade knocked the teapot over. The handle cracked ominously.
Mrs. Lawton turned her phosphorescent head so quickly her neck snapped.
Marmalade batted the teapot as if it were Strawberry’s mouse, rolling it closer and closer to the edge of the sideboard. Mrs. Lawton’s grip loosened. She ground her teeth so savagely, one fell out and corporealized when it hit the ground.
Marmalade flicked the teapot once more and as it tumbled, Mrs. Lawton lunged for it, momentarily forgetting Moira. Moira scooped up the dead woman’s tooth and tucked it next to her glass eyeball before diving out of the window. She scampered up the first drainpipe she found, flattening herself onto the roof to catch her breath. Her black hair tangled around her, catching in the shingles. A neighbor thundered out of his door in his nightshirt.
When Marmalade jumped up beside her, Moira rolled over onto her feet, brandishing a dagger. The cat calmly licked her paw. Moira let out a shaky laugh. “That did not go as planned, Marmalade,” she said. “Let’s go home.”
She walked the ridge like a circus girl, balancing lightly and keeping her chin high. When she reached the edge she turned right, intending to head home.
Pain gnawed at her, as if her boots were full of angry bees.
She stumbled to a stop, cursing. She wanted to go to her favorite summer rooftop made of slate tiles that held the heat pleasantly. There was even a spot of thatch she’d used to plug up a hole that made for a fine pillow. She kept excellent care of the roofs, as all Madcaps did. A leak meant ladders and repairmen and sometimes the Order’s Greybeards with their spells and pointy swords. But without a reason to look up, most shop owners didn’t have the time to bother, at least in the East End.
It was different in Mayfair, where rooftops were spelled to keep Moira and her kind away and gargoyles crouched, stuffed with magic. Madcaps had long learned the trick of pacifying gargoyles, if nothing else. And anyway, Moira preferred the East End. Home was home, whatever it smelled like. And however many hungry, crazy ghosts roamed.
And it was safer here, so long as she kept to the chimney pots and the shingles. Mrs. Lawton couldn’t follow, not while her body still lay in state. And the other Madcaps left symbols scratched into the tiles, warning of unsteady roof timbers, vermin, Greybeard patrols, and recruiting men. They were even worse than the ladies who came with baskets for the poor and pamphlets about the dangers of living on the street. As if any of the street urchins, Madcaps, or regular orphans ever chose St. Giles or Whitechapel because it was the better alternative. Just ask her brother.
Before the Order had caught him.
A flock of vampire pigeons circled overhead, sending children below shrieking for
cover. Moira wasn’t worried. Madcaps never fretted over the pigeons. They’d trained them with bloody leavings from the butcher stalls at Leadenhall market. It was one of their few weapons against the Greybeards and even occasionally, the ordinary night watchmen. London was not kind to the poor or the supernatural.
She preferred to control her own life even if it meant sleeping wrapped around a chimney pot for warmth. Dirt and cold rain didn’t scare her, not like having her essence trapped in a Greybeard’s bottle.
And she didn’t particularly like Mayfair, which was fine since its inhabitants loved it enough for everyone.
Which made her wonder why she was now running toward it.
But she’d learned, even before Mrs. Lawton, that when the bottoms of her feet itched the way they did right now, she ignored them at her peril. The last time she’d ended up dodging the nightwatch for an hour and a half after she was caught with a handful of stolen pocket watches. The Order might claim you, but the nightwatch could clap you in irons and shuffle you into a poorhouse. She shuddered at the thought and kept running, her trousers rolled above her ankles and her boots marked with sigils for speed. She stayed well south of Newgate prison, raced past courtesans waiting outside the theater on Drury Lane and along the Strand to Pall Mall.
All because her toes itched.
The alleys between buildings widened. She left the shops that tilted together like dandies holding each other up after drinking themselves sick. She ran until the worn shingles turned to copper flashing and marble columns. The clubs and shops were made of white stone, gleaming like bones. She wanted to stop on one of the flat roofs to catch her breath, but pain stabbed up her ankles and all the way to her knees when she paused too long.
It only receded when she kept moving, kept running, and only toward Grosvenor Square of all places, all mansions and columns and balconies. A single mansion could have taken up an entire block in Whitechapel. They were fit for aristocrats and royalty, not Madcap girls dressed as boys with pockets full of stolen goods. The gargoyles became elaborately carved art in rose-colored stone and marble, not river clay fired in a coal grate. They still stank of magic though, that curious mixture of fennel seeds and salt.
The Longest Night Page 7
